Networked mobile wireless telecommunication computing devices such as smartphones and tablet computers have recently come into widespread use, and as a result there has been an increasing focus on providing mobile applications or “apps”, that is, software programs that are tailored to these networked mobile wireless telecommunication computing devices, rather than to laptop or desktop computers. Mobile applications run directly on the operating system of the networked mobile wireless telecommunication computing device. As a result, developing mobile applications requires a knowledge of the relevant operating system, such as iOS for iPhone and iPad devices offered by Apple Inc. and Android offered by Google Inc., and entails a fairly involved process since each mobile application must be developed more or less from scratch.
Many networked mobile wireless telecommunication computing devices, especially those sold to consumers, include a Web browser as part of the basic original equipment manufacturer (OEM) software package. A Web browser (referred to herein simply as a “browser”) is a software program that can retrieve and present information on the World Wide Web (referred to herein as the “Web”) and typically can also run specialized programs written in a suitable scripting language. Such programs are referred to herein as “browser-executable software programs”. Because of the ubiquity of browsers as part of the OEM software provided with networked mobile wireless telecommunication computing devices, there has recently been some movement towards the use of browser-executable software programs to mimic a mobile application. Browser-executable software programs that mimic mobile applications are designed to cause the browser to present a web page that appears to the user to be a mobile application, and can import and present content from specific locations on the Web. For example, content from an entity's existing web site and/or content hosted at a third party web site like Facebook or Flickr, may be presented by such a browser-executable software program. Developing such browser-executable software programs is less involved than developing true mobile applications, i.e. mobile applications that run directly on the relevant operating system. However, development of browser-executable software programs nonetheless requires knowledge of the relevant programming language and browser and knowledge of the presentation format of any content that is to be obtained from the Web, and also requires that the relevant computer program code be manually developed, based on that knowledge, for each browser-executable software program. Thus, while a browser-executable software program that presents a web page as a mobile application is easier and faster to develop than a true mobile application, development of such browser-executable software programs still requires considerable time and effort by a skilled programmer or team of programmers.